Try Again
by njking24
Summary: Naruto dies only to wake up back in the past and die again in the same day. Every time he dies he comes back to the same day, no mater how hard he tries, no matter how hard he fights, he always has to try again.


1-

He dies a hard death. Battered and bruised with his skull fractured and his chest caved in. His ear ruptures and leaks thick red blood, that same blood leaks into his chest cavity before he dies. His last thought also being his last word, a quiet, almost unheard word "fuck."

He wakes up thirteen years old in his room feeling strange. He freaks out, because time travel isn't real. You can just press a button, or make a wish and reset things. But somehow it's been done. _Somehow it's been done. _

So he rushes to the Sandaime, in tears because _he's fucking alive_ damn it and tries to explain. He spills everything, future, past, secrets and skills. He shows the old man the shadow clone, and the rasengan and tells him it'll be okay. The old man looks at him. _Really _looks at him, and then smiles this sad smile he'd never noticed before. Then the old man makes a hand sign and he wakes up in a T.I chamber.

And he's tortured.

Again, and again, and again. He's beaten and bruised and learns the new meaning of pain. Torture is meant to slow and painful, meant to make it so you feel _every single second. _There's no reprieve. It's not fighting where blows are aimed to kill as fast as possible. It's not sparing, where blows are meant to teach lessons. Its pain.

All pain.

Finally the old man comes to see him with a sad look on his face, and Naruto feels the betrayal shoot into his heart. The old man was supposed to understand.

"Naruto, don't worry, we'll fix this, and you won't remember a thing."

All he can do is stare, and his last words before Inochi comes to wipe his mind is the same he said when he died. "Fuck." But Inochi doesn't wake up from the mind wipe, and Uzumaki Naruto remains unconscious, as seeping red chakra leaks out of him.

Kurama smashes Konoha for killing his only friend, and that was the end of that.

-6-

He's learned by now. Set some rules for this shit. His third loop he just went along with thins, coasted along with forewarned knowledge of events. His second loop had been…well hard on him. _Real hard._ Used and learned skills when he should. Followed everything as close as possible and died. This time thought, instead of his skull fractured and heart ruptured his spleen had actually been severed. So there was that.

The fourth time he tried to go at it with a "mask angle" he spent another session in T.I. after a month. Turns out sudden changes in personality was suspicious as shit.

The fifth time the giant snake in the chunnin exam got him, turns out its fangs were venomous, and giant snake venom while not venomous in small "normal" snake portions is still venomous in giant snake portions. He got to learn the hard way what it was like to be drowned in your own fluids while being slowly digested.

Follow the path for the most part change little things. Change your personality slow, carefully so it looks like a natural progression. In theory…that should work.

But it wasn't working, and the fight with Neji was going pretty piss poor. This time he'd chosen to use Ibisus training, which now that he looked back at it was a terrible idea. He tried to jump back but Neji's palm strike hit him in his chest and he died. It was a piss poor death.

-7

He took up fuuinjutsu. Cause the Uzumaki were good at fuuinjutsu right? Well that was his reasoning at least. And you know what? He was fucking good at it. Really good at it, with his clones and all. Fuinjust was a fourth theory, a fourth math to make sure that theory worked, a fourth calligraphy, and a forth gumption and dumb luck.

He could be a thousand of himself and his handwriting got real good, and he was lucky too. But math…well he was better at it.

But obviously not good enough. Time space seals weren't anything to fuck with, and now that he knew what it felt like to be shredded apart at the atomic level, he'd respect the math a little bit more.

-18-

He kills Neji in the chunnin arena with fuuinjutsu. It's a brutal death, a botched Hirishin that transported him across the arena and leaves his skin behind and a good number of his organs. He can hear the crowds gasp of horror, feel his own revulsion at the act and is moving before he realizes it. He kills neji, because there's no way to save him and all he can do is watch his friends bleed to death.

He kills himself, then and there, slips a kunai into his heart and lets his blood spill onto the floor. The ANBU are moving into action before he hits the floor. He dies staring at a white owl mask, with shame, and horror and pain filling his heart.

-29-

He sits atop the Statue with a bored look in his eye. He's tired of this by now. _So damned_ tired. The years seem like a blur to him, how old was he now? Sometimes the loops lasted _years. _They'd last as long as he was alive, and sometimes he was alive for decades. He'd spent a few loops, a few lifetimes just running, and hiding and trying to learn only to die, die, and die. Only to wake up back in that room, with only the silence and the clock on his wall to break it.

"Naruto!" Sasuke's voice…Sasuke himself made him angry once, after a dozen loops or so. But now…

"Leave Sasuke….just get out of here."

His chakra was already streaming through his body. They were going to fight, they always fought. And it was always here. Always at the Valley of the End. This time he'd decided he'd be the source of it.

"You can't just leave Naruto, you can't just…abandon us. Abandon the team."

It felt strange, it being the other way around. This time he'd just left. Just decided one day that he was tired, he was bored of Konoha. He wanted to see the world and not be on the run from a masked madman. At least for a while.

"Naruto!" And finally Sakura had caught up. He could feel Kakashi's presence, the apathetic bastard just sitting there waiting for them to try and talk him out of it. But they couldn't…he didn't care. He just couldn't care anymore.

"Why?" Her voice seemed so honest, so hurt…

"Cause' there's no point to it anymore. I can't pretend, I'm tired Sakura. I just…I need to do something new." And then Sasuke, stupid dumb naïve, Sasuke lunges at him, and his blade comes out, and it's slicing through his soft flesh and there's a stop. A shriek from Sakura as Sasuke's life spilled onto his hand. The blur of the world of Kakashi's palm slipped across his vision.

"Naruto." Kakashi's pissed, and he can't help but to smile. He hadn't seen Kakashi pissed in decades. All he had to do was kill Sasuke. It makes him laugh, but it's a hollow thing.

"Sorry Sensei."

Then he's gone, the seal activates and the world blurs, and he's in the vast deserts of Suna. But the bloods still on his hand, and he finally feels something, _anything _for the first time in years. A frown crosses his face, and the emptiness returns.

"Maybe next life." All he can do it walk past the hard rock enclave, and start his trek into the shifting sands.

**(Sakura)**

All she can do is stare in horror as Sasuke's blood spills onto the valley floor.

"Sensei…"

She can barely talk, can barely say anything. Her mind is stunned and the horror of the situation makes her sick. She wants to vomit. So she does. The taste of bile and acid in her mouth makes her vomit some more and for a few minutes it's horrible, horrible cycle. Vomit because of Sasuke, then because of the vomit, and this continues until her world goes black.

She wakes up in a cool white room with Kakashi-sensei next to her. His face is unmoving, somehow even more still and expressionless beneath his mask. He blinks, as if just now realizing she was awake, and manages a weak smile.

"Sasuke…Naruto?"

He doesn't answer her question, and she realizes it's true. Naruto killed Sasuke. Sasuke was dead. She cries and Kakashi-sensei just stands there, awkwardly by her side unsure what to do. She sobs, because her team is done, because she's done and she's known it for a while.

Since the day after the graduation ceremony Naruto had changed. The happy go lucky boy, the seemingly endless enthusiasm, the annoying never give up attitude had gone. In a day Naruto seemed to have aged years, changed completely. He'd stopped asking her out, and at first she'd been happy. But soon she realized she'd relied on him to cheer her up, on him to support her, on him to be there when Sasuke rejected her and Ino insulted her and she felt weak and pathetic.

It had been Sasuke who'd pointed it out to her. She hadn't even realized it, her days and weeks with the team had just seemed to be getting worse.

Then one day, after the mission to wave he hadn't shown up, and Sensei was early.

Now they were here. With her teammate dead, and the other gone, and just her and Sensi.

"Kakashi-sensei…why? Why would Naruto do that? Why..?" Why would the happy go lucky Naruto suddenly turn to cold Apathy. Why would he kill Sasuke without as much as a blink? _How _could he kill Sasuke with so little effort? Naruto hadn't been particularly skilled. He'd gotten stronger since graduation sure…but not as strong as Sasuke…right? _Right?_

Sensei seemed lost for a contemplative. Then he frowned. "I can't tell you, it's above your rank Sakura. If you want to know, you'll have to ask Naruto…only he can say."

She frowned, and sorrow took her again. "Naruto's strong isn't he Sensei."

"He's stronger than I thought he was. More skilled and knowable than I expected as well. I knew he was hiding his skills, I didn't think…no." Kakashi-sensei stood from his seat. "I didn't think at all."

"Sensei…" Naruto _was _stronger than Sasuke, and he hid it. He kept it to himself when they were in danger, is it because he didn't care. About them, or the team, or the village, or even maybe himself. He'd changed, and she wanted to know _why._

"Train me Sensei…please?"

**That's the end of this chapter. It'll continue next chapter. I wrote this as a break from my other stories and as something to start to get me back into the writing spirit, I've been exhausted from school/work and have had little energy to do much at the end of the day let alone write Oh well. I've not abandoned starting small or another world, but the waves of time is on definite hiatus for a while. Tell me what you think. **


End file.
